Just curious if anyone had any such experiance or am I just paranoid?

There are a ton of crooks on evilbay. There was a guy arrested a few month back, he stole a lot sum of money by selling computers. At first he was sending them out to customers, but then he decided to keep 100% profit. He even paid people $50 for leaving him possitive feedback before receiving the goods.

Also be careful if you receive 'ebay' e-mails asking for you to login. Ebay will never e-mail you anything like that. I have gotten a few e-mails like that before, they look very real to a person who never suspectes anything.

A few months ago I was bidding on an item where shill bidding was used. I was able to prove it by the same pattern in several past auctions by that seller. Ebay will not do anything to protect you as a buyer if it will interfere with their profits.

After the auction ended the shill 'winner' contacted me and said they changed their mind and offered to sell me the item. I told them to

If you report the fake emails to Evilbay, they will take action. Why, because it effects their profits.

Vegas, you should have offered them 1/2 what the bids were and then reported them to Evilbay when they rejected your offer. Evilbay would have taken action, because they loose out on the commision on the sale.